Bombs exploded at Mexican political and financial targets on Monday, rattling a country already nervous about unrest in a poor southern state and a deep political rift from an acrimonious election in July.
Another lurch toward failed state status. Or maybe another tug back toward failed state status.
Another body-slam deeper into failed state status, or maybe another pile-driver headfirst into failed state status ...
No one was injured in the blasts at Mexico's top electoral court, an opposition party's headquarters and a Canadian-owned bank in the capital. No group claimed responsibility for the bombings.
A door was damaged and windows blown out at the electoral court, known as the Trife, which angered leftists in September for ruling that conservative candidate Felipe Calderon won July's presidential election. Judges threw out claims of fraud by leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who held street protests that paralysed the centre of the capital for six weeks.
Wonder whose followers are responsible for that?
Glass and ceiling panels covered the floor of an annex building at the headquarters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, near one of the city's main streets. Ulises Ruiz, the PRI governor of Oaxaca state, is embroiled in a five-month conflict with protesters demanding he resign. Some 15 people have died and federal police clashed with demonstrators there last week.
An explosion also tore apart the metal and glass facade of a branch of Canada's Scotiabank in the south of Mexico City. A fourth bomb at another bank failed to go off and police found and deactivated a fifth device in a diner near the PRI headquarters. The Foreign Ministry was evacuated when a caller warned of a bomb there but it was a false alarm, a ministry source said.
Sounds like they haven't yet admitted that rampaging leftists are trying to undermine Messico's modicum of stability.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/07/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Close off the border and that puppy will explode. We're their relief valve.
Cuba's foreign minister backed away Monday from his prediction that Fidel Castro will return to power by early December, raising questions about the pace of the communist leader's recovery from intestinal gastric cancer surgery.
My guess is he'll be all better sometime around Doomsday, give or take a couple weeks.
Felipe Perez Roque also told The Associated Press that there was no guarantee that Castro would be well enough to attend the postponed celebration of his 80th birthday on Dec. 2. Perez Roque had told the AP in September that he expected Castro to be fully back at the helm by early December, and when asked about the birthday celebrations had said: "I have no questions in my mind that we will be able to celebrate his birthday in December as he deserves."
Complete with a six-hour stemwinder.
But in an interview Monday, Perez Roque said he couldn't discuss whether Castro would return to power so quickly. "It's a subject on which I don't want to speculate," he said, adding: "The important thing is his recovery, which he's doing in a serious and persistent manner."
"He's stable but slowly deteriorating, just like Franco."
Castro has not made any public appearances since July 26, a few days before he was sidelined by the surgery and announced a temporary transfer of power to his younger brother Raul. The Cuban government has treated Castro's ailment as a state secret, releasing sporadic videos and photographs to prove he's recovering.
Sorta like what dictatorships do when the head cheese is ill.
A video released late October on state-run television showed the Cuban leader defiantly denying rumors that he was on his deathbed. Yet some Cubans said they were surprised to see how frail he still was.
Perez Roque said he meets with the leader frequently, and has seen him since the latest video. "He looks good," the minister said. "I see that his recovery is advancing, that his convalescence is satisfactory."
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/07/2006 00:00 ||
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#5
My dad hated Fidel Castro so much he named the ugliest pig in one of my brood sow's litters "Fidel". He took great pleasure in butchering that pig for ham and bacon when it was a year old.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/07/2006 19:37 Comments ||
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Crisis centres in Malmö, Sweden have documented an alarming increase in the number of violent or threatening incidents involving Danish couples living in Sweden. Workers at the centres say the cases involve immigrant women forced into marriages with Danish men of immigrant background. The men have moved their families across the strait to Sweden because of the strict Danish residency and immigration laws.
'Unfortunately, it seems as if the Danish authorities have closed their eyes to the problem,' said Agneta Frick, manager of a Malmö women's crisis centre.
Frick said there have been at least 25 cases of domestic violence involving a transplanted Dane in the past year. Ten of the cases involved women who have lived at the centre under protection. She said most of these women were basically slaves in the relationship and had been threatened with death if they attempted to leave. 'None of these women were allowed to make friends or learn Swedish and none of them could go back to their homeland.'
Swedish police also verified that the problem is becoming more noticeable. 'Problems with the Danish couples have become especially visible in the last few years. We're seeing cases of sexual abuse and systematic violence against both women and their children,' said Anna Gustavsson, head of the Malmö police's family violence division.
Swedish women's advocates blame Denmark's immigration laws for making it difficult for battered immigrant women to leave their husbands and remain in Denmark. The women's residence is typically conditional on their marriage and seeking divorce means being forced to leave the country. I don't think unassimilated Muslim men are taking their wives to Sweden because their abused women prefer lenient Swedish divorce laws.
Denmark's immigration minister, Rikke Hvilshøj, said the problem isn't with Danish laws but with the men themselves. 'It isn't our laws that create this violence, and I don't decide to whom the Swedish authorities give residency,' Hvilshøj told public broadcaster DR. Our Danish brothers. Bless 'em all!
Frick said that the situation affects the Swedish authorities' pocketbooks as well, as it costs around DKK 2500 per day to house an abused women at the centre. She doesn't understand the Danish refusal to take responsibility for the problem. 'Sometimes it seems as if it's just as [far?] from Sweden to Denmark as it is from Sweden to Pakistan.' Swedish values. The good news is that the Swedes appear to be blaming the Danes first, instead of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld.
#2
Workers at the centres say the cases involve immigrant women forced into marriages with Danish men of immigrant background. The men have moved their families across the strait to Sweden because of the strict Danish residency and immigration laws.
Get a Frickin' clue, Frick. These aren't Danish people. They're "immigrants" (from guess where?), that don't have anything close to Scandahoovian values. Your criticism of Denmark's strict immigration laws should give you pause to reflect. Maybe you need to tighten up your own immigration policy.
While none of this justifies or excuses spousal abuse, allowing people from places that practice Abject Gender Apartheid to flood into your own country just might have something to do with it.
Denmark's immigration minister, Rikke Hvilshøj, said the problem isn't with Danish laws but with the men themselves.
Any of this getting through? That you are stupid enough to allow violent nonassimilating (Muslim) males into your country is your own damn fault.
Frick said that the situation affects the Swedish authorities' pocketbooks as well, as it costs around DKK 2500 per day to house an abused women at the centre.
That's insane! What are you doing, providing room service and wait staff? Over $400 dollars per day to house one abused woman? Put the women into a residential commune and make them clean house and cook their own (free!) food. Once again, socialist nanny state idiocy gone off of the rails.
Kurt Beck, leader of the Social Democrats, called Monday for a European army with a single command, the first time a German political party has proposed such a structure. If adopted, it could lead to the European Union pursuing a security and defense policy independent of NATO.
The proposal was immediately rejected by President Lech Kaczynski of Poland, who said in Vilnius on Monday that the EU should build an army of 100,000 that would remain linked to NATO. Alliance officials said NATO supported the EU playing a greater security and defense role.
In his first major foreign policy speech since becoming leader of a party that is joined in coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc, Beck said Europe should become a "global peace power" with its own military command and goals.
That goal has eluded European governments in the past and there is no agreement on it now. Still, security analysts said the proposal from Beck, who became party leader last May, reflected unease in Germany and elsewhere in Europe about NATO's identification with U.S. leadership.
Beck told delegates during a special meeting in Berlin that such defense ambitions for the EU would not rupture the trans-Atlantic relationship because, without the United States, "we cannot solve global problems."
However, instead of "following" or "adhering" to the United States, he said, the Europeans should establish a partnership "based on quality(sic). This is the particular challenge for Europe." Perhaps that should have been equality.
In the long term, Beck said, "Europe's security and defense policy would have a single military command."
Germany is preparing to take over the rotating presidency of the EU in January. Its Defense Ministry is trying to define how and when the German Army should intervene in trouble spots during peacekeeping or crisis prevention missions.
By airing the idea of an integrated European force, Beck has revived a debate that only three years ago was seen as a threat to the basis of the trans-Atlantic relationship.
At that time President Jacques Chirac of France; Gerhard Schröder, who was chancellor of Germany, and the leaders of Belgium and Luxembourg, all of whom opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, proposed an EU military headquarters. NATO said that would be a direct threat to the alliance and the trans-Atlantic relationship.
Since then, the idea had been placed on the back burner because Britain, Poland and some other countries opposed a single European command, arguing it would be at the expense of NATO.
The fault linew in Europe are becoming clearer. There is no advantage to the US is trying to pretend that Europe is something it isn't. In fact denying reality only means the split will be more devastating when it does come.
"This is DNN" looks to be a hilarious satire of CNN and Michael Moore works, set however in the year 1944 (the middle of "FDR's War", as the newscaster calls it).
Click on link and check out the preview. The premiere will on on 10.Nov in North Hollywood. DVDs on sale now!
Posted by: Dar ||
11/07/2006 17:32 ||
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A poll worker was arrested Tuesday and charged with assault and interfering with an election for allegedly choking a voter and pushing him out the door, officials said.
It apparently started as a dispute between the two over marking the ballot, said Lt. Col. Carl Yates of the Jefferson County sheriff's office.
The voter told poll worker Jeffery Steitz that he didn't want to vote in a judicial election because he didn't know enough about the candidates, but Steitz told him he had to vote in the race anyway, Yates said.
Steitz, 42, eventually grabbed the man by the neck and threw him out of the polling place, Yates said.
"The poor guy went back in and he threw him out again," Yates said. "At least it wasn't over a Democrat or a Republican being on the ballot."
Election officials called police.
"That about tops off the day," said Paula McCraney, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County clerk's office.
There was no immediate response to a call seeking comment from Steitz at his home.
---------------------------------------------------------- Voter uses Paperweight to Smash Voting Machine
In Pennsylvania, a would-be voter was arrested at a polling place in Allentown, where election workers said he smashed an electronic voting machine with a paperweight.
Authorities didn't know what caused the outburst. "He came in here very peaceably and showed his ID, then he got on the machine and just snapped," volunteer Gladys Pezoldt told The Morning Call of Allentown.
The machine's screen was damaged and it was not immediately clear if votes recorded on the machine could be retrieved. Police said the man faced charges of felony criminal mischief and tampering with Voting machines.
Note : Drudge reports there are voting machine malfunctions in 37 counties where the vote is registering for the wrong candidate.
#1
And ALL the problems with the electronic voting machines are solely due to dhimms inability to properly punch a chad....and the LSM promoting it in FLA in 2000.
The server is slow to react or overwhelmed, so I'm posting it here. Also, I can add a bit of snark at the beginning! :-)
Take a peek into the liberal mindset. Somehow, all the polling stations and government mechaisms are controlled by the Evil Pimple-Faced Republicans with Evil Blackberries with Do-Not-Allow-To-Vote Lists (based on race and religon and Rovian Demographics). Even if they actually were, it seems part of the liberal DNA sequence to assume that this would go on unopposed. And all this straight from the same innocent folks who are the masters of obstructionism!
The only links I find are of the "buy my book", "give me money", and and "read more of the same kind of paranoid $#!+" variety. To be fair, I only checked out a couple of pages. I could be wrong!
Anyway, fasten your seat belt and try to hang on to your sanity!
by Greg Palast
for The Guardian (UK), Monday November 6, 2006
Heres how the 2006 mid-term election was stolen.
Note the past tense. And Im not kidding.
And shoot me for saying this, but it wont be stolen by jerking with the touch-screen machines (though theyll do their nasty part). While progressives panic over the viral spread of suspect computer black boxes, the Karl Rove-bots have been tunneling into the vote vaults through entirely different means.
For six years now, our investigations team, at first on assignment for BBC TV and the Guardian, has been digging into the nitty-gritty of the gaming of US elections. Weve found that November 7, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy. Four and a half million votes have been shoplifted. Heres how theyll do it, in three easy steps:
#1
I take "steal back your vote" to be an open call to commit fraud. So I don't really see a reason why we should care about this guy; Democrat vote fraud is a given. It's the entire reason the measures he's whining about are being taken.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
11/07/2006 15:36 Comments ||
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#2
I think the man ought go back to his "mushroom" salad. He might feel better.
#3
He forgot reason #4: Voting Republican.
For some reason, these American idiots don't understand that only the Democrats can bring gun control, higher taxes, higher deficits, universal health care, and the welfare state - they keep voting for these evil Republicans who believe in things like individual responsibility and free enterprise and principles and have never read a word of Marx in their lives. Judging from the election returns since 1994, the Republican Party has stolen billions and billions of votes from the Democrats by merely being on the ballot.
Posted by: The Doctor ||
11/07/2006 15:52 Comments ||
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#4
How the hell did he get a hold of Halliburton's secret plan? Karl Rove is slipping....
#5
I think he takes a different way home every night so the Black Helicopter boys can't scoop him up and take him to the camps.
At least he won't make it easy for them...
#9
. . . youre just a bunch of crybaby pussycats who dont deserve to win back America.
Well, he got one thing right, anyway.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/07/2006 16:27 Comments ||
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#10
When we do the arithmetic, we find that well over half of all votes spoiled or blank are cast by voters of color.
This is determined how? You folks right there in the booth with them? They're admitting to you that they marked their ballots incorrectly? They're lying to you to cover up the fact that they didn't actually go out and vote?
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/07/2006 16:30 Comments ||
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#11
This is determined how?
The author is a liberal. He knows "voters of color" can't mark their ballots properly. He just knows it.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
11/07/2006 16:45 Comments ||
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#12
Cracks me up, everything he names removes voter fraud and the way around such measures are fairly easy. Bunch of crap.
Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in banning.
#14
#13 asshole troll colored votor - which color? There are several.
Guess you didn't know that.
Here's a clue: it's not all about YOU.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
11/07/2006 18:19 Comments ||
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#15
Guess I should have turned on the sarc tag explicityly, but I thought the reference to the "Halp Jon Carry" picture would be good enough. Sorry for any misunderstanding. My intention was to agree with #11 and to poke fun at the liberal idea that "colored" people for some reason can't read well enough to pick their candidate and need to have their hand held. Mods please consider putting it back with this in mind.
#16
What a pack of lies, hallucinations, fever-dreams, and wishes.
The fact of the matter, from my POV, is that most of what this as***** (sorry, mods) - idiot says can be more attributed to the Dhimmis than it can be to the Republicans. In fact, the list of Democratic voting machine frauds begins with,
ballot box stuffing
ballot boxes simply lost
ballot boxes being found floating in the bay
dead people voting
felons voting
illegal aliens voting
homeless being paid to vote a certain way
"voters" bussed in to particular precincts & then bussed to others
ie voting often
etc
etc
etc
In other words, every dirty trick and fraudulent voting methodology attributed to the Republicans has been and continues to be initiated and conducted by the Democratic Party.
The spin is to put it all on the Republicans and spin it so it all lies on our backs.
It's disgusting, dishonest, and a clear attempt to wrest power from the people in the name of the people.
#17
Sarcasm doesn't transmit very well on the Internet, even when you post under your usual nym. And when you post something like that under a nym like "colored voter", people are almost guaranteed to come unglued. And to make matters worse, it's been a bad afternoon for the Troll Patrol.
In any case, there's no mechanism for retrieving comments from the Sinktrap.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
11/07/2006 19:22 Comments ||
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#18
Halp libberulz! Im reeding rantberg and kan't vot tooday bekuz i cant spel Bush!
Yes, the television networks will be conducting exit polls today. But if you are looking for the leaked exit poll estimates that typically appear online on Election Day, you are probably out of luck at least until later tonight. More on that below. But as long as you are here, let me tell you a little bit about how exit polls are conducted, how they will be different this year, and why it is probably best to try to ignore the exit poll estimates that will inevitably leak later tonight. . . .
Go read it all; there's lots of good information in here on the mechanics of polling. Instapundit adds:
My prediction: If they're bad for the GOP they'll leak early. If they're good for the GOP, they won't.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/07/2006 09:33 ||
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#1
I don't get too excited about any exit poll data much before 9PM. They tend to get info from folks before 3PM and report it as "the majority". Unfortunately most folks who actually have jobs and care how their tax money is spent don't vote until after work.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/07/2006 11:39 Comments ||
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#2
I don't believe any polls. There are too many people with agendas gathering the data, so their results are tainted. We care about the results. If we want to do a post mortem, we can look at the demographics and the precincts and slap a study on it. The rest is fluff and time filling for proganda news people. Waste of bandwidth.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/07/2006 16:17 Comments ||
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#3
Oops! propaganda, like a male goose.... my bad.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/07/2006 16:18 Comments ||
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Former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, who was an influential adviser to Colin L. Powell when Powell was secretary of state, has weighed in on today's midterm elections, saying they offer the United States a chance to win back lost allies around the world.
"The message I think from the electorate is that fear doesn't work. You've got to go back to what is traditionally ours, and we've got to go back to those things that made us important in the eyes of the world," Armitage said yesterday in a speech in Canberra, Australia, according to Reuters.
Armitage was the No. 2 man to Powell from the beginning of the Bush administration until their resignations in 2005. A former Navy officer, Armitage was seen as part of the wing of the Bush administration more cautious about invading Iraq. He recently acknowledged that in 2003 he was a source to the news media of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Continued on Page 49
#3
Wow. Well said, TW. I've had personal exposure to Armitage when he was doing a very impressive job (years back), and his attitude was especially refreshing. It's almost literally hard to believe he actually thinks this stuff - standard misinformed Beltway delusion. Also nice of him to slander our troops - they've been "exporting" a lot of good things in the face of fear and oppression that are the only tool our enemies bring to the fight. Sheesh.
#7
Once again a government official shows his true colors. We have someone who is being paid to obey the lawful orders of his superiors showing arrogance and total contempt for the elected officials we the people have placed in positions of authority. Mr Armitage should not only be fired, he should lose any pension he was hoping to receive. Such "unelected lawmakers" should swing, but I'll settle for their immediate ouster and total loss of all government privileges.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/07/2006 17:32 Comments ||
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#8
I'd rather not talk about the accusations put out by those who have crossed the line from cryptozoology into stalking atm; I'm rather too upset about the current situation.
Armitage was willing to let others take the fall for his actions because he had policy differences with them, at a time when he was supposed to be implementing the executive's policies, and not his own.
#9
IIUC he still is a foreign-policy advisor to POTUS candidate John "how dare you question me" McCain
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/07/2006 19:27 Comments ||
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#10
McCain better think; he already has enough baggage with the voters already without hiring as an "advisor" someone who's gonna turn around and bite him in the ass when it turns out to be expedient.
An hour-by-hour guide to tonight's results.
This year the networks say they are guarding their exit poll results as if they were crown jewels. The results will be delivered to a "quarantine room," access to which will be granted to only two staffers from each network and wire service, who must surrender all cell phones, BlackBerrys and similar devices before entering the room. Such precautions are designed to prevent preliminary results, often wrong in 2000 and 2004, from being posted on Web sites like the Drudge Report.
Only at 5 p.m. will the occupants of the quarantine room be allowed to reveal the exit polls to their bosses. The networks claim to have completely revamped their exit-poll methodology, which in 2004 had surveys in which the results, collected mostly by female graduate students, consistently favored Democrats. The changes will mean the networks will be slower to call the winners. That and the difficulty of adjusting for the large number of absentee ballots could mean a longer night than usual.
So how to make sense of things this election night? Don't feel obligated to listen to the endless analysis of the pundits (including me) on the networks. Consider turning down the TV to a whisper and either watching the crawl of actual returns on the bottom of the screen or monitoring them on the Internet at sites like RealClearPolitics.com.
Given that the longer election night might not suit everyone's bedtime, I've prepared an hour-by-hour guide to tonight's results to provide clues on how each major party is doing even if individual winners in races haven't been called. All times are Eastern. In a bow to tradition, we've listed states that went for George W. Bush two years ago in red and those that went for John Kerry in blue. The letters after state names indicate governor and senate races, with the incumbent party in the appropriate color (independents in black). For example, "California GS" indicates that the Golden State went for John Kerry in 2004 and has a governor's race with a Republican incumbent and a Senate race with a Democratic incumbent. Go to the link for the hour-by-hour poll closing info.
(2006-11-06) Just hours before voters go to the polls to annoint Rep. Nancy Pelosi as the new House Majority Leader, the California Democrat said the conviction and death sentence for former dictator Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi High Tribunal happened in spite of, not because of, foreign policy decisions by U.S. President George W. Bush.
It was just a matter of time until the law caught up with Saddam, said Rep. Pelosi. If it hadnt been for Bushs illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, it would have happened in some other way, and probably sooner. For example, Saddam might have been impeached by the Iraqi legislature, or voted out of office, or even brought up on charges at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
Rep. Pelosi said her party plans a full-court press in the next 24 hours to demonstrate how common it is for brutal dictators to be arrested, brought to trial by their own countrymen and convicted after a lengthy legal process.
Weve got researchers pulling together that list right now, she said, adding that no names come to mind at the moment, but if George Bush was involved at all, then it must be exceedlingly simple and common.
#1
BLOOMBERG NEWS > MICHAEL MOORE says he's now MAINSTREAM + methinks the imperus is on America to save Saddam in the name of Midwest values, Norman Rockwellianism, + Main Street, USA.
A Transparency International survey of 163 countries based on perceived levels of corruption saw Pakistan slip down two places compared to its ranking of 145 last year, suggesting a rise in corruption. According to the survey, Haiti, Myanmar and Iraq were perceived as the most corrupt countries in the world while Finland was seen as the cleanest.
Transparency International (TI) said in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index that some of the worlds poorest nations were also the most sleaze-ridden, undermining international development efforts. Pakistans neighbours India, Iran and China were ranked as 74, 106 and 71 on the list of 163 countries. The Berlin-based corruption watchdog ranked the countries based on perceived levels of corruption among public officials and politicians in its 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). The index score ranges between zero, for highly corrupt, and 10, which is very clean.
TI said that corruption was shockingly rampant worldwide with almost three-quarters of the countries in the report scoring below five, including all low-income countries and all but two African states. Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, was ranked last, just below Iraq, Myanmar and Guinea, reflecting what TI said was a high correlation between violence, poverty and corruption.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/07/2006 00:00 ||
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When then-Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton nullified the U.S. signature on the International Criminal Court treaty one month into President Bush's first term, he declared it the happiest moment in his years of service. Bolton referred to the court as a "product of fuzzy-minded romanticism . . . not just naive, but dangerous." The bipartisan concern then was that American service members deployed overseas risked exposure to a foreign tribunal. President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Treaty on his last day in office in 2000, while registering strong reservations. Now, as the court prepares to begin public hearings on its first case, the debate among senior U.S. military officials seems to be shifting away from staunch opposition, and a fresh assessment of the court seems to be underway.
The new attitude has been prompted in part by the court's record since it began operations three years ago; Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, an Argentine, has dismissed hundreds of petitions for cases against the United States. The cases were turned down for lack of evidence, lack of jurisdiction, or because of the United States' ability to conduct its own investigations and trials. Out of some 1,500 petitions to the chief prosecutor, almost half accused the United States of war crimes. In a letter made public last year, Moreno-Ocampo's office said it was throwing out 240 such cases concerning the war in Iraq. Reviews of each claim determined that none fell within the court's jurisdiction, his letter said, because the United States is not a signatory.
#1
Lots of poor reasoning on display here. Worst of all, the preposterous idea that remaining outside the court's jurisdiction undermines our credibility as a power that acts both in accord with our legal obligations and with accountability. While operating against enemies who - to the collective pin-drop silence of all those sophisticated and civilized human rights-loving nations who are probably most concerned by our stance on the court - are among the most barbarous in modern times, the US has conspicuously complied with every reasonable obligation, and gone much further than required in most cases. And accountability for US soldiers is probably greater than for any other force on Earth.
What is it with those dullards obsessed with obtaining the worthless regard of hostile and morally debased foreign regimes - "allied" or otherwise?
#3
In the event the UN does not survive the next World War, it will be interesting if the Americans, having witnessed the failure of OWG without it and the failure of OWG with it will come to the conclusion that OWG is a bad idea.
#4
In a letter made public last year, Moreno-Ocampo's office said it was throwing out 240 such cases concerning the war in Iraq. Reviews of each claim determined that none fell within the court's jurisdiction, his letter said, because the United States is not a signatory.
And somehow we are meant to believe this is a case for signing the treaty.
#5
And what happens when Senor Ocampo is replaced with Monsieur deVillepin?
" Out of some 1,500 petitions to the chief prosecutor, almost half accused the United States of war crimes." But according to Traitor Leahy "The ICC has refuted its critics, who confidently and wrongly predicted that it would be politicized and manipulated by our enemies to prosecute U.S. soldiers,"
In the entire world, half of the crimes are committed by the US? But the process is NOT being manipulated?
#6
Great points, Alan C, and my thoughts exactly. Just because something APPEARS to be working well (fromt the US point of view) right now, doesn't mean it won't change when you get some international prosecutor into office.
Posted by: BA ||
11/07/2006 10:13 Comments ||
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#7
The article makes a strong case against the court when it mentions half the cases were against the US. It just goes to show the anti-American elmement out there is ready to pervert the court the first chance they get. The fact that these nusance suits are being dismissed doesn't change the fact that they were submitted in the first place.
If the court was knee deep in anti-North KOrea or anti-Zimbabwae or anti-Cuban stuff I'd have a lot more faith. But the folks that might complain in those countries will be killed if they do so this whole thing is a farce.
#8
It also illustrates the power of a single judge in the ICC. Remove Mr. Moreno-Ocampo and put in someone else, and those complaints will come flooding through.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/07/2006 15:32 Comments ||
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#9
I think the knowledge that we would have happily told them to go pound sand may have contributed to that reluctance.
GENEVA - The International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross called for an international ban on cluster bombs Monday ahead of the Conference on Certain Conventional Weapons this week. The humanitarian organization said submunitions were inaccurate, unreliable and had caused a disproportionate number of civilian deaths and casualties during and after armed conflicts in the past 40 years.
And, properly used, they cause havoc on the opposing force.
It is a terrible reality that civilians are so often caught up in the horrors of modern conflict, but it is utterly unacceptable that they should return to homes, villages and fields littered with explosive debris, said Philip Spoerri of ICRTC.
Cluster bombs had been widely used in conflicts in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Serbia and Montenegro, Afghanistan, Iraq and most recently in Lebanon. Wherever they had been used, the high rate of failure had left a long-term and deadly legacy of contamination, he added.
Last week the charity, Handicap International, also called for a ban saying there were still an estimated 33 million unexploded submunitions lying on the ground, post conflicts.
The ICRTC urged nations attending the CCW, due to begin Tuesday in Geneva, to immediately end the use of unreliable cluster munitions, ban them from being dropped in populated areas and eliminate stocks of inaccurate and unreliable cluster munitions.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/07/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Fine. But let's develop sub-munitions with fusing that decays in a few weeks or so if they fail to detonate. Similar to the land-mines we now have. Highly effective munitions saved for use by Geneva-complying powers like the US, problem solved.
Why do I think such an appropriate solution would only cause grinding of teeth in Geneva? For all their exposure to armed conflict, it's never seemed that many of the ICRCers have developed a very sophisticated understanding of the role of force in human affairs.
#2
It is a terrible reality that civilians are so often caught up in the horrors of modern conflict, but it is utterly unacceptable that they should return to homes, villages and fields littered with explosive debris, said Philip Spoerri of ICRTC.
These same civilians lived for years with sealed Hezb'allah weapons caches in their homes. Yet somehow the Red Thingy cannot work up enough bile to comment.
A radical new 'silent jet' that looks like a giant, flying sting ray and makes the noise of a washing machine is being touted as the quiet, clean future of air travel.
The conceptual design was unveiled in London on Monday by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge University researchers. Consisting of a single shell that blends the airplane body and the wings into a seamless flying machine, from outside an airport its designers say it would sound about as noisy as a washing machine.
The original idea was to hugely reduce the noise of airplanes, a move that could spell silent bliss for residents living near airports -- and could let airports expand further into highly populated areas. In a major bonus, though, the final design also promises to be about 25 per cent more fuel efficient than current planes. The silent aircraft is designed to carry 215 passengers, with a predicted passenger-mile ratio similar to a Toyota Prius hybrid car.
The overall shape of the silent jet is one curved wing with air intake vents on the top of the craft, instead of below the wings. The entire craft contributes to lift, so takeoff and approach speeds can be lower, which lowers the noise generated and improves fuel efficiency. There are no flaps or hinged rear sections on the wing and engines are embedded in the aircraft. The project aims to develop aircraft by 2030.
#2
It sounds like a winner to me, customer objections to the new appearance aside. Does it fit into the standard box that the current bodies do... one of the issues with that failed Airbus design being that it was too big for current airport design?
#3
And what exactly is a passenger-mile ratio? I assume it means passenger-mile/gallon of fuel?
Posted by: BA ||
11/07/2006 10:16 Comments ||
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#4
Wat deee hell? The picture at the linked site shows a version of Boeing's Blended Wing Body design concept. This sucker was touted about by Northrop Grumman nearly 2 decades ago and was subsummed by Boeing later, right now they got a concept version being tested at Dryden for wind tests. Also I can tell you the biggest problem of why it isn't flying yet as a passenger aircraft, it has to do with tilting, you really don't want to be at one of this craft's body looking down say 4-6 aisles at the other end even during a mild banking turn. Nausea probably wont even begin to describe how bad it would get.
#5
Can you say "Vomit Comet", sure you can! This is a nightmare for airline commuters : correcting banks will be like a ride on a roller coaster in the amusment parks. And god help you if you have a drink or a meal in hand when the plane has to do a corrective manuever - one side of the plane has stuff flying up, the other side has stuff slamming down.
#7
By the time one of these birds rolls out the carriers will no longer be serving food or drink of any kind, so in-flight migration of airline comestibles should not be a problem. Otherwise, I predict NASA-style retort pouches. It's not like texture or flavor could possibly suffer any more if you pureed the crap.
Seating of 35-50 people abreast sure could create some nasty vertigo perceptions for those at the upper end of things during banking maneuvers. The flight crew will prbably have to carry dramamine dart guns to nail hurl-prone passengers.
#8
Why not just put walls or screens in the plane along the fore/aft axis in such a fashion that the seats are divvied up into seversl short rows 2-4 seats across like current aircraft? Would this prevent the perception of tilt?
I'm not joking, I really am curious.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
11/07/2006 19:01 Comments ||
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#9
It would seem to be an excellent idea, save that evacuation routes would be constricted and the ability to debark all 600-800 people from the plane in just a few minutes could be compromised severely. I'm sure that is probably why the concept of limiting sight lines hasn't already been employed.
In a surprise announcement, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer seems to be doing a deal with Novell and the SUSE Linux folks. Apparently, the goal is to make Linux interoperable with Windows and perhaps move some apps onto the Linux platform. What could be brewing? Does it make any sense that Microsoft is going to embrace Linux in a big way? After all, Ballmer used to demean it.
I think something is up, and it was probably triggered by Larry Ellison's announcement at the recent Oracle OpenWorld event that his company would sell support services for Red Hat Linux. I suspect that the big enterprise players are each going to jump on one of the various Linux boats and start a software war.
The fact is, Microsoft is way overdue in this effort. What has the company been waiting for? It's been waiting for the final legal ramifications of "shims," that's what. Microsoft has been leery of doing too much with Linux because of all the weirdness with the licenses and the possibility that one false move would make a Microsoft product public domain at worst, or subject to the GPL at best. As far as old-school software companies are concerned, the GPLthe GNU General Public Licenseis a ridiculous pain to deal with, especially if you have a unique invention that you want to bring to the partyand want to make money doing so.
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Posted by: Fred ||
11/07/2006 00:00 ||
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#5
Why doesn't MSFT just write software that doesn't suck? Why do they need to have a special (slow, buggy) layer to translate their suck into something Linux can deal with?
Funny, innit, how you can write something for Linux and compile it on a modern Mac, but MSFT has such arcane and borken interfaces that doing a Windows port is like reading the Necronomicon and following it up with the Democrat party platform and the collected speeches of Howard Dean, John Kerry, and Ted Kennedy.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
11/07/2006 8:25 Comments ||
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#6
The GPL ensures fair competition between free and non-free software.
1) Because it has not teh moral-detroyinbg effect of seeing your effort robbed by people who make $$$$ on YOUR efforts
2) Because it does not encourage splits where one of the members leaves to create a compeny and carries a good part of the talent with him
As an illustration let's see what happenned to the BSDs who twelve years ago had a huge technologicakl lead over Linux (due to the fact they based on DARPA-funded code while Linux was made from scratch) and today FreeBSD gets its ass-handled in benchmarks while NetBSD is virtually dead.
Don't like GPL then write your own code!
PS: I completely oppose GPL for libraries (THAT is viral) and I can'st stand SDtallman both on teh software side and on the political side (first case of Bush derangement syndrom , whose reactions to 9/11 were shameful and who is also one of those people who hide their nazi-like antisemitism behind the Palestinains).
#9
Pleeease, in the mainframe world you have applications who have been running since the 60s and still IBM's MVS sets records for uptime. So don't throw backwards compoatibility as an excuse.
I'm a C++ programmer and I look at the messy layer of "interfaces" and techniques available in Windows and it's pretty obvious that trying to support all that rubbish is why MS has problems.
Mainframes run a few simple programs in comparison.
I'm hoping Vista is a clean-break OS, and they EMULATE the previous interfaces etc.
#11
Old Spook: Thats why the GPL sucks - it restricts how you can deploy software on it and it can be viral.
The BSD license style are the true "Free" software in that anyone you give it to can do anything they want with it.
The BSD license is more liberal than the GPL, and a public domain license is more liberal than BSD. The GPL was specifically designed to restrict certain activities which would result in software being effectively taken away from its original creators. It's not something that can be condensed into a sentence or two. For background, read Stallman's remarkable history of the destruction of the MIT AI hacker culture and why he created GNU:
Personally, I appreciate both the BSD and the GNU GPL, and use both Linux and OpenBSD. BSD is for people who would like to see their software used by as many people as possible, regardless of commercialization. GPL is for the little guy who uses, fixes, and creates software and doesn't want the development to be taken out of his control
Whether it's BSD or GPL is entirely up to the original author of the code. Both are admirable.
However, Microsoft could possibly buy out the OpenBSD and FreeBSD teams for, say, twenty million dollars per developer, move the development inside Redmond, and then discontinue it. While the original code would still be available, the project would be destroyed (assuming the developers signed non-compete contracts etc.).
This would be very difficult to do with a GPL project, and that's the intent.
This Microsoft initiative is the usual FUD. How's this for a threat:
"Let me be clear about one thing, we don't license our intellectual property to Linux because of the way Linux licensing GPL framework works, that's not really a possibility," said Microsoft chief executive, Steve Ballmer.
"Novell is actually just a proxy for its customers, and it's only for its customers," he added. "This does not apply to any forms of Linux other than Novell's SUSE Linux. And if people want to have peace and interoperability, they'll look at Novell's SUSE Linux. If they make other choices, they have all of the compliance and intellectual property issues that are associated with that."
There is no one on the BSD side who will fight Microsoft. (deRaadt does a good job fighting vendors on open driver code). Stallman and Eben Moglen have a hell of a fight on their hands, and they have been successful so far, thankfully.
Stallman has an extremely stubborn, persistent, and iconoclastic personality. That's what it takes to fight this battle.
#12
However, Microsoft could possibly buy out the OpenBSD and FreeBSD teams for, say, twenty million dollars per developer, move the development inside Redmond, and then discontinue it. While the original code would still be available, the project would be destroyed (assuming the developers signed non-compete contracts etc.).
Guess I'd better start learning to program in C, huh?
#14
English has a problem: 'free' can mean 'liberty' or 'no cost'. Stallman means 'liberty'.
He has no problem with people making money on software. The nature of the GPL precludes certain kinds of revenue streams, but there are others.
There has been a ton of software developed under the GPL and other free licenses: GNU/Linux, X, OpenOffice, and tens of thousands of lesser items. It may not be quite as flashy or convenient as a Mac, but it gets the job done.
BTW, I don't have anything against proprietary software, either, so long as it doesn't try to wipe out the 'libre' software through legal attacks.
#15
And how much code now tagged and sold as commercial and proprietary was originally created under DoD contract and from various governmental funding initiatives?
#16
I believe the future is to have hidden OS's. What is the OS on the xBox360? or the iPod. Doesn't matter what makes it tick as long as it works and is reasonably easy to use.
Microsoft sees that and as they move onto the next phase of computers and embedded stuff and internet applications they are looking for advantages. If that advantage is Linux they'll go for it.
Here is a clue. It's Balmer FUD.
If youy want to be a happy computer user, use and support what works for you. For most people it's going to be some flavor or Microsoft.
I have been using Linux on my desktop since 2000, it does everything I want to do. We are down to one computer out of five running Microsoft in this house and it hasn't booted that OS in 6 months.
I do very little worrying about my OS and spend my time working with my computer and enjoying it instead.
Let Balmer run his mouth, he is good at it, it's what he gets paid for. IBM is behind Linux, it has many more software patents than Miocrosoft does. You will not be seeing this in court.
Malaysia dropped a sodomy charge against the adopted brother of former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim on Monday, his lawyer said, ending an eight-year legal saga that both men claimed was politically inspired.
Sukma Darmawan, 46, was to have stood trial for a second time on Monday, charged with "allowing" Anwar to sodomize him, but the state prosecutor instead surprised the court by saying the charge was being withdrawn, lawyer Gobind Singh Deo said. "What we have witnessed is a victory for judicial independence and even prosecutorial independence in this country," Gobind told Reuters by phone.
Sukma was jailed in 1998 for sodomy after making what he said was a forced confession. Prosecutors later used Sukma's admission to convict Anwar, who spent more than five years in jail on corruption and sodomy charges before being freed in 2004. Anwar had denied all the charges, saying they were contrived to end his career after he fell out with then premier Mahathir Mohamad and led anti-government protests. The High Court quashed his sodomy conviction within a year of Mahathir's retirement.
Sukma had quickly appealed against his conviction and was released on bail part-way into his six-month jail term, pending the outcome. Finally, in June this year, the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction and ordered the case to be retried.
"It's great, great," Sukma told Reuters by phone. "It's been a terrible time. It's been almost nine years, so at last I have freedom." He said he now lived in Indonesia, caring for his elderly mother.
Anwar welcomed the news and said the Attorney-General, the country's chief prosecutor, owed an apology. "I pray and hope that oppression will not be repeated in our country and change is implemented to restore the credibility of the government and the establishment," he said in a statement.
Sukma says he made a false confession after police sexually abused him and threatened to have him shot. He says authorities offered him leniency if he falsely accused Anwar of sodomy.
Gobind said the prosecution had told the court on Monday that it was dropping the charge partly because of the age of the case and the fact Sukma had already spent time in jail. The deputy public prosecutor was not immediately available for comment on Monday.
#1
Malaysia drops sodomy charge against Anwar brother
Gobind said the prosecution had told the court on Monday that it was dropping the charge partly because of the age of the case and the fact Sukma had already spent time in jail.
FedEx Corp. said Tuesday it has canceled its order for 10 Airbus A380 jets, the new jumbo double-decker plane that has been dogged as it were by numerous delays. The company's FedEx Express unit has ordered 15 Boeing Co. 777 freighters and taken options on an additional 15, FedEx said in a news release. The company cited Airbus' production delays as the reason for the decision. Airbus regrets the decision by FedEx, company spokeswoman Barbara Kracht said, "but we understand their need to urgently address their capacity growth."
FedEx did not immediately return a call for comment. Boeing did a little happy dance and said delivery of its aircraft to FedEx Express will begin in 2009. "We're looking forward to working with FedEx on this new chapter in our relationship," said Ray Conner, vice president of sales for the Americas for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
#1
I was just going to post this too! Great news for Boeing--more detail here at the Seattle PI.
Posted by: Dar ||
11/07/2006 13:54 Comments ||
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#2
Fedex was the launch customer for the freighter version. For them to back out is a signal that the the A380 is in much worse shape than publicly announced.
#3
Airbus cited as underlying causes [for the A380 delay] the complexity of the cabin wiring, its concurrent design and production, the use of two incompatible versions of the CATIA computer-aided design software, the high degree of customisation for each airline, and failures of configuration management
How does cabin wiring affect the freighter version? It would seem that Airbus could deliver freighters while sorting out the cabin wiring issues for the passenger planes.
#4
in other A380 news, Airbus today said it was going to dump many suppliers in an effort to cut costs. While that is commendable, it speaks of too little too late and still doesn't address the root cause of delayed schedule. How do fewer suppliers fix the wiring problem, which was the whole thing that started this mess?
#6
DoDO: perhaps the fact that the a/c is about 6 tons overweight and the entire production schedule is delayed while working the wiring has a lot to do w/ FedEx's decision. I agree, it would seem like the freighter could be slid to the front of the build line to at least get some market exposure while working out the kinks in the wiring (pun intended). But too bad for Airbus!
#8
reading the press release from FedEx, i get the impression that they are still looking for an aircraft with bigger capacity than the triple 7; i still think that the 747 LCF will make it into production for a customer, rather than a strictly Boeing internal asset.
#9
Fedex was the launch customer for the freighter version. For them to back out is a signal that the the A380 is in much worse shape than publicly announced.
MORE fighting goes on in parts of suburban US than Iraq, according to Australian filmmaker George Gittoes who has just finished a documentary set in a Miami "war zone". Gittoes' latest feature, Rampage, contrasts life for a family living in the blue-collar community of Brown Sub, Miami, with ongoing fighting in Iraq.
"It is much worse in Miami than it is in Baghdad," Gittoes said in Sydney today. "There is a sense of people with guns, drug dealers lairing at you ... and being there, I knew I was in a war zone."
Rampage is the second in Gittoes trilogy of documentaries based on the war in Iraq. It follows the success of 2004s Soundtrack to War, which depicted American soldiers and their music in Iraq.
The film will be released in cinemas around the world and Gittoes is expecting plenty of controversy. "Even left-wing Americans ... don't want to recognise the mess they've got in their own backyard," he said.
Gittoes has spent much of his career travelling the world, painting, filming and photographing wars in places such as Rwanda, Afghanistan, and East Timor. "To me, this was just another war zone and it was in America," he said.
Gittoes said there were similar stories to Rampage in Australia's indigenous communities, although he said the task of translating that on the big screen would be difficult. "The film that I'd like to make in Australia I couldn't make," he said. "All of our politically correct laws and things wouldn't let someone like me make a film like this in an Aboriginal community in Australia."
The final film in the trilogy, Fearless, and will examine the impact of the Iraq war on the American soldiers who have fought there. "It is about the difficulty of exit and how much the soldiers have changed and become hardened warriors and how much the people they're fighting have changed as well," he said.
#1
Next time he should go to other places in Miami other than the 'canes FIU game.
Where the hell is "Brown Sub"? Having lived in Miami I know about Liberty City, Overtown, and the black Grove all being the not so nice parts of town. I never heard of brown sub must be a really nasty part of the forementioned places.
Posted by: bruce ||
11/07/2006 21:27 Comments ||
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#2
I did some searching and found that this is supposed to be north central dade county. I guess this is where one of my co workers was stopped during a riot but one of the locals said for a cracker he's cool let him go. That sounds like the area. BTW, Miami-Dade Mass Transit offers a three hour tour of these places.
Posted by: bruce ||
11/07/2006 21:43 Comments ||
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WASHINGTON (AP) The price of gasoline has fallen to its lowest level in more than 10 months. The federal Energy Information Administration said Monday that U.S. motorists paid $2.20 a gallon on average for regular grade last week, a decrease of 1.8 cents from the previous week.
Pump prices are now 17.6 cents lower than a year ago and have plummeted by more than 80 cents a gallon since the start of August. The last time prices were below $2.20, on average, was the week ending Dec. 26, 2005. Gasoline can be found for less than $2 a gallon in many parts of the country.
The price of oil is down roughly 25% since a summertime peak above $78 a barrel, settling Monday at $60.02. Average retail gasoline prices peaked at $3.07 a gallon in September 2005, reflecting the extreme tightness in the market following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which knocked out refineries in the Gulf region as well as pipelines that deliver fuel to the East Coast and Midwest.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
11/07/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Saudi plot? Shell stations, owned by KSA here, sell for 20 cents per gallon less than other name brands, with another 40 cents or so rebate for getting and using a new credit card from them.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Bombs exploded at Mexican political and financial targets on Monday, rattling a country already nervous about unrest in a poor southern state and a deep political rift from an acrimonious election in July.
Cuba's foreign minister backed away Monday from his prediction that Fidel Castro will return to power by early December, raising questions about the pace of the communist leader's recovery from intestinal 
Crisis centres in Malmö, Sweden have documented an alarming increase in the number of violent or threatening incidents involving Danish couples living in Sweden. Workers at the centres say the cases involve immigrant women forced into marriages with Danish men of immigrant background. The men have moved their families across the strait to Sweden because of the strict Danish residency and immigration laws.
GENEVA - The International Committee of the Red 
In a surprise announcement, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer seems to be doing a deal with Novell and the SUSE Linux folks. Apparently, the goal is to make Linux interoperable with Windows and perhaps move some apps onto the Linux platform. What could be brewing? Does it make any sense that Microsoft is going to embrace Linux in a big way? After all, Ballmer used to demean it. 
FedEx Corp. said Tuesday it has canceled its order for 10 Airbus A380 jets, the new jumbo double-decker plane that has been dogged 
MORE fighting goes on in parts of suburban US than Iraq, according to Australian filmmaker 
WASHINGTON (AP) The price of gasoline has fallen to its lowest level in more than 10 months. The federal Energy Information Administration said Monday that U.S. motorists paid $2.20 a gallon on average for regular grade last week, a decrease of 1.8 cents from the previous week.
